| Course Title: Science as Culture |
| Start Date: 01/28/2025 End Date: 05/13/2025 |
| Term: Spring Semester 2025 |
| Description: What is science? The progressive discovery of Nature's laws? The process of honing claims about the universe? Is science the act of postulating and testing hypotheses? Or is it tinkering and experimentation? This course offers an advanced introduction to cultural and anthropological studies of science. Through careful readings of work in areas such as the sociology of scientific knowledge, actor-network theory, feminist science studies, and affect theory, we will explore the sciences as complex systems of cultural production. The course will culminate in a series of critical ethnographic studies of how the sciences shape concepts and experiences of race, the body, gender, and sexuality. |
| Distribution(s): III - Social Sciences , MP - Multicultural Perspectives , WI - Writing-Intensive |
| Academic Level Of Course: Undergraduate | Credits:4.00 |
| Faculty | Phone | Email address |
| Matthew Watson | mcwatson@mtholyoke.edu |
| Meeting Dates | Method | Meeting days | Meeting times | Building name | Room | Frequency |
| 01/28/2025 - 05/13/2025 | Seminar | Monday | 01:30PM - 04:20PM | PORT - Porter Hall | 108 | Weekly |
| Requisite Courses | ||
| Prereq: 8 credits in the department. | Take previously | Required |
| Comments |
| Additional Comments |
| Course Tags | ||
| CRPE0001 | CRPE-1: CRPE - Major Pathway/Minor | This course has been approved to count towards the CRPE major pathway and the CRPE minor. |
| CRPE0003 | CRPE-3: Critical Social Thought - Major Pathway | This course has been approved to count towards the CRPE Critical Social Thought major pathway. |
| Cross-listed Sections |
| None |
| Course Availability | ||||
| Section status: Closed | Capacity: 15 | Enrollment: 15 | Available: 0 | Waitlist: 0 |
BOOK INFORMATION
| Book List | Required | Publisher Full Price |
| Title: Beamtimes and Lifetimes: The World of High Energy Physics Author: Traweek, Sharon Copyright: 1988 Edition: Volume: ISBN: 9780674063488 Publisher: Harvard University Press |
Required | 31.00 |
| Title: The Collectors of Lost Souls: Turning Kuru Scientists into Whitemen Author: Anderson, Warwick Copyright: Edition: Volume: ISBN: 0801890403 Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press |
Required | 27.95 |
| Title: Code: From Information Theory to French Theory Author: Geoghegan, Bernard Dionysius Copyright: 2023 Edition: Volume: ISBN: 9781478019008 Publisher: Duke University Press |
Required | 26.95 |
| Title: Database of Dreams: The Lost Quest to Catalog Humanity Author: Lemov, Rebecca Copyright: 2015 Edition: Volume: ISBN: 9780300209525 Publisher: Yale University Press |
Required | 37.00 |
| Additional Book Comments |
| This is the complete book list for this class. |